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Description

It's for 's Valentine's Day contest.
(does it show okay?)
The idea:
The night before last, as I was waiting for sleep, I was thinking about a few things, including the fast approaching contest deadline, and I got the idea of drawing the Paperman characters with some paper planes making a heart around them. Yesterday morning I did a quick dA search for "Paperman heart" and "Paperman valentine" and didn't see anything similar (at least not on the first page), so I went ahead with it. But the image did change a bit from the original idea. I thought it might look better to have the planes go around them horizontally instead of vertically (I didn't think to change the idea for the corners of the heart, but I think it would look better with the corners done this way anyhow). I thought about drawing a bg, like the city or train station or something, but then thought it would be neat to draw them sitting on a piece of paper. I also made the shadows sketchy and didn't blend the coloring much.
References:
Before drawing them, I re-watched the Paperman short and took a few screenshots for reference. I drew them without a reference for their poses (besides a quick look at my Parent Trap picture to see where the line for her leg should be, since it was a similar pose). It's probably a little off because I hadn't referenced it, but it's supposed to be a quick contest, so I just went with doing it quickly.
The quickly diminishing stack of paper:
I didn't think about it while I was drawing it, but me working on it was a little like the scene with George at the office. :P I used 32 pieces of paper.
I used a page to sketch the characters, a page for character lineart, and a page for character coloring.
I sketched some planes flying around them, and used seven other pages while working out plane placement and trajectory (I was originally going to have twice as many planes, but I couldn't seem to work out the timing chart when I had every other plane at the opposite position (highest/lowest point). I used eight pages for the frames for the planes.
I used a page to work out the angle I wanted for the piece of paper bg, a page for the bg lineart, and a page for the bg shading (the piece of paper darkens as it goes into the distance - also, I scanned the lineart and coloring together to give the lineart a softer look).
I sketched out a heart shape in perspective (it took a few tries, but I modified it on the same page - I also ended up drawing a little heart on the same page and looking at it from the side to finally figure out the shape), and then I used the flat heart shape to trace the first plane frame in that shape. I did most of the other shadow frames without tracing the planes, and did pencil tests in Photoshop to make sure they matched up right. I then went back and shaded in the shadows on the same eight shadow lineart pages (I also modified a few of the lines so the shadow would move around his foot).
And lastly, today I used a page for the shadow on the paper (that was the only one I hadn't done yesterday).
There's 21 final pieces of paper making up this image. 16 for the animation and 5 for the stationary part of the image.
Stuff in Photoshop:
I had the picture mostly done yesterday, and even had it partly arranged in Photoshop last night, but it took awhile today to erase the paper noise around the flying planes in Photoshop. I had adjusted the levels for and erased the white area of the different layers of the drawing. It was the hardest for the planes because the planes are white; there was a huge amount of noise around them because I couldn't change the levels much. I added the coloring to her lips with Photoshop. I also added the bg gradient behind the piece of paper. I moved the planes to fly around them a little higher. I masked off part of the plane and plane shadow paths so the planes would go behind the characters. I cropped the top of the image.
Stuff I'd thought about doing:
I thought about putting a lipstick mark on one of the planes. There's eight planes and eight frames, so I thought it might work out without needing to add duplicate frames with Photoshop, but then, after adding three lipstick marks in Photoshop, I realized it would be 64 little kisses instead of just eight. I had also originally semi-considered the possibility of animating the characters a little, but... I didn't have any good ideas, and I thought it would be a little bit of work to animate them and I'm lazy (drawing 64 paper airplanes and 64 paper airplane shadows (not including the planes I had sketched earlier or the ones I had redrawn) wasn't actually too hard). And, nothing wrong with them just staring at each other.

Description

It's for 's Valentine's Day contest.
(does it show okay?)
The idea:
The night before last, as I was waiting for sleep, I was thinking about a few things, including the fast approaching contest deadline, and I got the idea of drawing the Paperman characters with some paper planes making a heart around them. Yesterday morning I did a quick dA search for "Paperman heart" and "Paperman valentine" and didn't see anything similar (at least not on the first page), so I went ahead with it. But the image did change a bit from the original idea. I thought it might look better to have the planes go around them horizontally instead of vertically (I didn't think to change the idea for the corners of the heart, but I think it would look better with the corners done this way anyhow). I thought about drawing a bg, like the city or train station or something, but then thought it would be neat to draw them sitting on a piece of paper. I also made the shadows sketchy and didn't blend the coloring much.
References:
Before drawing them, I re-watched the Paperman short and took a few screenshots for reference. I drew them without a reference for their poses (besides a quick look at my Parent Trap picture to see where the line for her leg should be, since it was a similar pose). It's probably a little off because I hadn't referenced it, but it's supposed to be a quick contest, so I just went with doing it quickly.
The quickly diminishing stack of paper:
I didn't think about it while I was drawing it, but me working on it was a little like the scene with George at the office. :P I used 32 pieces of paper.
I used a page to sketch the characters, a page for character lineart, and a page for character coloring.
I sketched some planes flying around them, and used seven other pages while working out plane placement and trajectory (I was originally going to have twice as many planes, but I couldn't seem to work out the timing chart when I had every other plane at the opposite position (highest/lowest point). I used eight pages for the frames for the planes.
I used a page to work out the angle I wanted for the piece of paper bg, a page for the bg lineart, and a page for the bg shading (the piece of paper darkens as it goes into the distance - also, I scanned the lineart and coloring together to give the lineart a softer look).
I sketched out a heart shape in perspective (it took a few tries, but I modified it on the same page - I also ended up drawing a little heart on the same page and looking at it from the side to finally figure out the shape), and then I used the flat heart shape to trace the first plane frame in that shape. I did most of the other shadow frames without tracing the planes, and did pencil tests in Photoshop to make sure they matched up right. I then went back and shaded in the shadows on the same eight shadow lineart pages (I also modified a few of the lines so the shadow would move around his foot).
And lastly, today I used a page for the shadow on the paper (that was the only one I hadn't done yesterday).
There's 21 final pieces of paper making up this image. 16 for the animation and 5 for the stationary part of the image.
Stuff in Photoshop:
I had the picture mostly done yesterday, and even had it partly arranged in Photoshop last night, but it took awhile today to erase the paper noise around the flying planes in Photoshop. I had adjusted the levels for and erased the white area of the different layers of the drawing. It was the hardest for the planes because the planes are white; there was a huge amount of noise around them because I couldn't change the levels much. I added the coloring to her lips with Photoshop. I also added the bg gradient behind the piece of paper. I moved the planes to fly around them a little higher. I masked off part of the plane and plane shadow paths so the planes would go behind the characters. I cropped the top of the image.
Stuff I'd thought about doing:
I thought about putting a lipstick mark on one of the planes. There's eight planes and eight frames, so I thought it might work out without needing to add duplicate frames with Photoshop, but then, after adding three lipstick marks in Photoshop, I realized it would be 64 little kisses instead of just eight. I had also originally semi-considered the possibility of animating the characters a little, but... I didn't have any good ideas, and I thought it would be a little bit of work to animate them and I'm lazy (drawing 64 paper airplanes and 64 paper airplane shadows (not including the planes I had sketched earlier or the ones I had redrawn) wasn't actually too hard). And, nothing wrong with them just staring at each other.